Rainbow Six: Patriots Shot Dead as it Was 'Old-Gen'

Ubisoft has gone into further detail about why Rainbow Six: Patriots was killed off, explaining the title couldn't offer a "next-gen experience".

At last week's E3, the company told us how Rainbow Six: Siege would be focusing on multiplayer, in contrast to Patriots' single-player preoccupation, but according to Ubisoft technical artist Oliver Couture the decision to ditch one title and start another was mainly made due to the launch of the new consoles.

Exit Theatre Mode

“To be completely transparent, I worked on Patriots – on Rainbow Six for three-and-a-half years – and Patriots was old-gen. Xbox 360 and PS3," he told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. "Next-gen consoles were just around the corner, and we were like, ‘OK, we want to also have a next-gen experience. What can we do for that?’

“We were trying stuff out with destruction technology, and we realized destruction really changes the game. We tried to see how it could fit with old-gen, but it just didn’t work out. So for us it was just a better solution to clean the slate, reset, and make what’s best for the players.

“We’ve been working hard for the past year-and-a-half [on Siege].”

Exit Theatre Mode

Rainbow 6 Patriots was announced back in 2011. It went dark shortly after, and in 2013, Ubisoft told IGN that Rainbow Patriots "had to be remade." By then, had already Ubisoft started shifting away from the Patriots vision, before eventually arriving at a close-quarters, attack/defend multiplayer game in Rainbow Six Siege, which has been in development for 18 months, and launches next year.